Mort Zachter's childhood revolved around a small shop on
Manhattan's Lower East Side known in the neighborhood as
"the day-old bread store." It was a bakery where nothing was
baked, owned by his two eccentric uncles who referred to
their goods as "the merchandise." Zachter grew up sleeping
in the dinette of a leaking Brooklyn tenement. He lived a
classic immigrant story one of a close-knit, working-class
family struggling to make it in America. Only they were rich.

In Dough, Zachter chronicles the life-altering discovery
made at age thirty-six that he was heir to several million
dollars his bachelor uncles had secretly amassed in stocks
and bonds. Although initially elated, Zachter battled bitter
memories of the long hours his mother worked at the bakery
for no pay. And how could his own parents have kept the
secret from him while he was a young married man, working
his way through night school? As he cleans out his uncles'
apartment, Zachter discovers clues about their personal
lives that raise more questions than they answer. He also
finds cake boxes packed with rolls of two-dollar bills and
mattresses stuffed with coins.

In prose that is often funny and at times elegiac, Zachter
struggles with the legacy of his enigmatic family and the
implications of his new-found wealth. Breaking with his
family's workaholic heritage, Zachter abandons his pragmatic
accounting career to pursue his lifelong dream of being a
writer. And though he may not understand his family, in the
end he realizes that forgiveness and acceptance matter most.